


this blood on our hands (is just barely dry)

by pennyofthewild



Series: Agent for Hire [3]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: (not by any canonical characters), Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - Yakuza, Background Character Death, Experimental Style, Gang Violence, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Run-On Sentences, by which i mean very experimental, the author is a shameless multi-shipper and regrets nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29725302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennyofthewild/pseuds/pennyofthewild
Summary: Seijurou laughs, a short, humorless sound. “Principle?” he repeats, low and mocking, “Shintarou, please. You are a personal doctor to a yakuza boss. I think you are hardly in a position to lecture about principles.”a noir drama, in four parts.
Relationships: (background), Akashi Seijuurou/Midorima Shintarou, Aomine Daiki & Midorima Shintarou, Hanamiya Makoto/Imayoshi Shouichi, Midorima Shintarou/Takao Kazunari
Series: Agent for Hire [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2170257
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	this blood on our hands (is just barely dry)

**Author's Note:**

> ~~gasp, another fic less than a week after the last one? could it be that the world is coming to an end?~~
> 
> this fic happened because i accidentally read an extremely haunting wikipedia article (which i will not link), which disturbed me so much i had to write fanfiction as a sort of catharsis.
> 
> as you can see! this is set in the _Agent for Hire_ universe, though in this particular fic's case, prior reading is not really necessary. if you have read the previous two parts, please note that this one is _much_ darker in tone, mainly due to thematic content (see tags) and not actually because it is super graphic (in fact, it ended up a lot less graphic than i intended).
> 
> if for any reason you feel i missed tagging a trigger warning, please let me know in the comments so i can add it immediately. also, this is basically unedited/not beta read, so if you find any embarrassing typos, feel free to point them out (kindly note that my fingers are still rusty, which is what happens when you're on hiatus for years, so quality is in no way assured).
> 
> now, without further ado:
> 
> [ **[Listen]** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12NU9oRofk8)

**(i. the beginning)**

It starts like this:

Five minutes to midnight, and Shintarou is arranging his notes for the end-of-shift handover when the staff assist alarm goes off.

5.

‘ _Assault victim,’_ – bloodied nose, eyes swollen shut, a clearly fractured mandible – _‘seventeen year old girl with no prior medical history,’_ festering sores on her torso leaking purulent discharge, contusions, cigarette burns, ‘ _found in a state of altered mental status by a passerby in a park, initial GCS 11/15, multiple traumatic injuries – ’_

Her hand twitches. Eyes slowly peel open, focus dazedly on Shintarou’s face, eyelids crusted over with dried blood. Shintarou has to lean in to catch her voice, papery thin, barely above a strangled whisper –

“ _Sensei_ , please –

– just let me go.”

A breath, and then –

The bedside monitor begins sounding a piercing, incessant alarm. The pulse under Shintarou’s fingers falters, disappears. The tracing on the screen goes flat.

“Initiate CPR,” Shintarou says, grimly.

4.

It starts like this:

He runs the code for two thousand, one hundred seconds. She does not wake up.

The emergency room is quiet, afterwards, like the morning after a thunderstorm, air heavy with a weighty, pregnant silence, a moment of mourning –

_– it was that girl, you know, the one who was reported missing by her family last week? She was taken by a couple of teenagers running with yakuza. Hey, can you imagine? I heard they might be tried as minors –_

– and then it passes, and just like that, it is business as usual again. Shintarou hands his cases over to the physician covering the night shift, strips out of his ruined scrubs with brutal efficiency, steps into the in the ER’s tiny staff shower and scours his skin until it is pink and raw and burning under the onslaught.

_Fines. Community service. A couple days of jail time. Meaningless warnings._

Shintarou’s vision blurs, blazes crimson, red-hot anger licking up his throat. Slams his fist into the shower’s tiled wall. Rips the skin along his knuckles.

3.

Kazunari, in the middle of bandaging Shintarou’s battered right hand, glances upward from underneath his fringe, fixing Shintarou with an impassive look, forehead creased, mouth turned decidedly down at the corners. His perpetually dancing gray eyes are flat, humorless.

“Please,” he says, in a voice like flint, “don’t tell me you’re going to go hunting, Shin-chan.”

Shintarou says nothing.

Kazunari looks like he is itching to say a lot more. Instead, he breathes out, a heavy exhale, through his nose, briefly closing his eyes. Then he presses his lips together in a thin line, and goes to restock the dressing cabinet.

2.

“Absolutely not,” Seijurou says, and, as if to punctuate the command, folds his arms across his chest.

Shintarou is unsurprised, so he does not reply. Instead, he bites the inside of his cheek in an effort to stay composed. It is a futile gesture. The broken skin over the back of his hand twinges as his fingers curl into his palms. He is pretty sure the muscle twitching in his jaw is a visible thing.

As expected, Seijurou does not fail to notice. His eyes narrow, gold seeping into the red of his irises. “Shintarou,” he says, exasperated, pinching the bridge of his nose, “would you just _think_ about this for a moment – ”

Shintarou bows very low. Ninety degrees. Back straight, hands loose at his sides.

“Thank you, _oyassama_ ,” he says, voice dripping with unreserved sarcasm. “I’ll show myself out.”

He straightens, then, and before Seijurou can respond, turns on his heel and strides out of the office.

1.

“Sorry, Midorin,” Momoi says, and she truly looks it. “I’ve got orders that the gunroom is off-limits to you until you, and I quote, _drop this pointless_ _crusade_. And,” here, she sighs, bites her lip, “he also said, _if he’s so intent on doing this, let him do it by himsel_ f. If Ryou-chan were here I’m sure he’d have no problem bending the rules, but as you know, he’s out of the country. I’m really very sorry.”

Shintarou shrugs. “I’m sorry, too, Momoi-san, but it really won’t make a difference.”

**(ii. the intermission)**

“Ah, there you are,” Imayoshi Shouichi says, in his usual overly familiar manner, when Shintarou ducks into his shop, “my favorite customer.”

It is late – an hour or so from midnight – and the makeshift workshop is dimly lit. Usually, during the day, Imayoshi can be found at one of various stalls at one of Tokyo’s innumerable open-air markets – if he wants to be found, that is – and fewer people still know about this basement level workspace that is his permanent haunt. It is located a stone’s throw (i.e. a brisk ten minute walk) from Kabukicho, which suits Shintarou just fine. Especially on this particular occasion.

“Is this one of those bleeding hearts works for your boss, senpai?” a second voice drawls from further inside the room.

Apart from Imayoshi and now Shintarou, there is one other person in the shop. Shintarou recognizes him as Imayoshi’s long-term associate(?) partner(?) Hanamiya Makoto. He – Hanamiya – is seated across from Imayoshi and they are in the midst of a card game that Shintarou is currently interrupting. Shintarou takes in Hanamiya’s unbuttoned collar and carelessly unknotted tie – Imayoshi’s spine-chilling grin widens – and refrains from commenting.

“Don’t be jealous, now, Makoto-chan,” Imayoshi says. Shintarou, catching the look he gives Hanamiya and Hanamiya’s answering, indolent smile, barely suppresses a shudder, deciding that there are things he is most definitely better off not knowing. “Now hush and let me take care of our client here.”

Imayoshi stands, then, stretches, and retrieves a long narrow package wrapped in brown waterproof paper from behind the counter. He weighs the parcel in one hand, angles his head to the side, looks up at Shintarou from under heavily lidded eyes. “Sure this won’t breach the terms of my probation? I’d hate to get on Akashi-kun’s _other_ bad side.”

Shintarou says, blandly, “Like that’s ever stopped you before.”

Besides, Shintarou thinks, there was the text message he’d received from Momoi, earlier, on his way here. It was a brief one-liner – _he says it’s going to be a dagger_ – but Shintarou had understood the meaning behind it.

Imayoshi shrugs, “I can’t argue with that, can I,” he says, and hands the wrapped rifle over. “Well – here ya are – one Remington 750, loaded and ready to go. Just what the doctor ordered, eh, Midorima- _sensei_?.”

“I’m sorry,” Shintarou says, stiffly, “Is that supposed to be funny? I’m afraid I can’t quite see the humor in this situation.”

“Well,” Imayoshi says, “that’s because you need to lighten up, my friend. Is there anything else I can do for you, hmm? It’s really too bad Oha-Asa only releases the day’s lucky item list in the morning – ”

Shintarou says, “I need a dagger. It doesn’t matter what kind.”

Imayoshi tips his head back and laughs. “Ah. That’s just what I like to hear.”

Outside, there is a full moon, nestled in wispy, luminous clouds.

Shintarou checks his reflection in a parked car’s window. His clothes – suit-jacket and trousers, black turtleneck – are appropriately inconspicuous. He tucks his hair further under his dark knitted cap, draws the turtleneck to his chin. He checks and double checks his equipment – the rifle, slung across his back, his twin handguns, tucked securely in their holsters, the lucky dagger, stowed in his jacket pocket.

There is a chill in the air. The wind nips at his nose and raises color in his cheeks. It is fifteen minutes to midnight. As if on cue, a shadow passes over the moon, and the world goes dark. _Time to go_ , Shintarou thinks.

**(iii. the conclusion)**

0.

It ends like this:

It is too easy.

Shintarou tracks his quarry down to a seedy, rundown _izakaya_ in Kabukicho, picks them off one by one. He keeps his mind carefully blank – closes his ears and eyes, chokes back the nausea, blocks out the begging, swallows down the guilt. The shots blur, meld into a discordant harmony _(foot, knee – duck, turn – chest, face – roll, twist – spine, head)._ He does not miss. The stench of death curls in his nose, thick and fast, and his ears ring with shrill, drawn-out screams and the hollow, reverberant crack of the rifle.

Then there is just one left: The ringleader. And there is nowhere left to run. Through the haze of rage and loathing and revulsion it occurs to Shintarou: what a lucky piece of shit this is, that _Shintarou_ is the one who came after him, that he doesn’t have to be _alive_ to properly convey a message.

It ends like this:

It is too easy, and

then

it

is

over.

Shintarou stands in the middle of a darkened alleyway in the heart of Kabukicho, bathed in light from the full moon, strung taut like a bowstring nearly at breaking point and covered in blood, very little of it his own. The thought – of whose blood it is – is so utterly repellant that he can no longer keep back the bile that surges into his mouth. He ends up bent forward, hands braced against his kneecaps, heaving.

He is so spent that he fails to notice the gentle thud of the large black wildcat descending from the roof of the building behind him – until _fur_ brushes against his side and he startles into panicked awareness, knees buckling in shock – and then there are arms wrapping strongly around his torso, preventing him from crumpling to the ground.

“Hey,” Aomine says, almost directly into Shintarou’s ear, “Deep breaths. I’ve got you.”

“Before you come to any false conclusions,” Aomine says in the car – his own car, not a police vehicle, “Ryouta sent a couple hundred incredibly irritating text messages trying to guilt-trip me into bailing your ass out. Unfortunately, I was off duty for the night, and you know there’s no arguing with Ryouta when he’s in a snit, so really, I didn’t actually have any choice in the matter.” He adjusts the rearview mirror, gives Shintarou a look out of the corner of his eye, the set of his mouth wry. “Not that you needed the backup.”

Despite – or perhaps because of – the half-hearted protests, Shintarou can hear the things he’s left unsaid, the _sorry for letting you take care of this on your own_ and the _this was supposed to be_ my _job_.

It is probably that the adrenaline has drained away, been replaced by the sort of deep-set exhaustion that always serves to divest Shintarou of his usual inhibitions, because he feels like he’s been warmed through, in the wake of this (unspoken) declaration.

“I am grateful, regardless of the circumstance,” he says, and even manages a brief smile.

Somewhere between getting out of the alley and into Aomine’s car, the sun had begun to rise, illuminating Kabukicho’s towering steel-and-glass skyscrapers, lightening the sky from a dull navy-black to an overcast gunmetal blue, streaked through with faint yellow-gold. Shintarou sets his head against the window and watches the day break overhead.

“Try not to scrub your skin off,” Aomine says as he is pushing Shintarou into the bathroom with fresh clothes and a garbage bag, “and put your stuff in this if you want me to burn it for you.”

**(iv. the aftermath)**

In Seijurou’s office, Shintarou makes a show of placing his left hand and the lucky dagger on Seijurou’s desk. Seijurou’s eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly.

“For heaven’s sake, Shintarou,” he says, folding his fingers – cool, dry, meticulously maintained – over Shintarou’s, “I’m not going to cut your finger off. I am aware of the depths of your disappointment in me, and while I appreciate the theatricality of the gesture, it really is a bit much.”

“Besides,” he taps his nail on Shintarou’s trigger finger, “I’m not going to maim my best marksman. What sort of idiot do you take me for?”

Shintarou draws his hand back, not bothering with a response.

“Have a seat, Shintarou,” Seijurou says, sighing. Shintarou does, stiffly, fatigue turning his muscles into molasses. He almost slumps over in his chair; he has to force himself to sit up straight, back locked painfully in position, jaw tight.

There is a pause, during which the only sound in the room is the ticking of Seijurou’s wall clock, echoing in Shintarou’s ears.

“For what it’s worth,” Seijurou says, tipping his head back to look Shintarou in the eye, because even seated Shintarou towers over him, “I’m sorry about your no-kill policy.”

Shintarou meets his gaze, unflinching.

The silence between them stretches, thins –

“Oh, for God’s sake, Shintarou,” Seijurou explodes, “was it worth it, then? Were you able to assuage your irrational sense of guilt? Did you perhaps _bring her back_?”

When Shintarou speaks the words come out hoarse, raspy. “It was the principle of the thing,” he says, voice thick.

Seijurou laughs, a short, humorless sound. “Principle?” he repeats, low and mocking, “Shintarou, please. You are a personal doctor to a yakuza boss. I think you are hardly in a position to lecture about principles.”

Shintarou closes his eyes briefly, swallows to clear his throat. “The thing about being in _your_ position, as you are very well aware,” he keeps his voice calm, level, “is that you are solely responsible for the rules that govern you.”

Seijurou’s eyes flash gold. “You know it’s not that simple, Shintarou,” he grounds out, “and besides, that is hardly fair – as _you_ are _very well aware,_ I have spent the better part of the last decade – ”

“Laying out the groundwork for when you finally take over from your father,” Shintarou says, quiet, “I know.”

Seijurou looks furious at the interruption, but Shintarou leans forward, meets his gaze head-on.

“I don’t doubt your intentions, Seijurou. But until that time comes, what?” Shintarou says. “You’ll just turn a blind eye? Come what may? By all means, consider me an idealistic fool, but the fact remains. We’re guilty by association, Seijurou, you and I – and, worst of all – we actually have the power to make some measure of a difference.”

Seijurou’s shoulders slump, as if to say _you got me_. He runs a careless hand through his hair, rests his chin in his palm, regards Shintarou with something akin to remorse.

How utterly contrived, murmurs the incurable cynic that lives in Shintarou’s mind.

“I’m never going to be good enough for you, am I, Shintarou?” Seijurou says, molten red-gold eyes shuttering.

Shintarou hates himself, a little, for the way his heart comes to life in his chest.

It should stand to reason that, more than two decades into their acquaintance, Shintarou would be able to break free of this indissoluble hold Seijurou has always had over him. Regrettably, that hasn’t been the case. Even now, twenty years on, somewhere deep in his core, there remains this indelible part of Shintarou that craves Seijurou’s acceptance, desires his esteem.

Shintarou takes a breath, wets his lips, fixes his eyes on Seijurou’s face.

“I love you,” Shintarou tells him, frankly, “If there’s a seat in hades for you, we both know I’ve earned my place at your side.” He pauses for a moment, exhales. “But I’ll be damned,” he says, “if I don’t call you out on your bullshit, Seijurou.”

A beat. Shintarou bites the inside of his cheek, wonders if this time, he has finally said too much.

He needn’t have worried. Seijurou is smiling, one of his genuine, heartwarming smiles, the kind that remind Shintarou that despite his best efforts, he is _never_ going to escape his otherworldly, enchanting spell.

“You’re lucky I love _you_ ,” Seijurou huffs, and he crosses his arms over his chest, eyes bright, cheerful, “or you’d never get away with it.”

The apartment is dark, when Shintarou gets back. The only light on is a single naked bulb hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen, where Kazunari is seated in front of his laptop and textbooks. He has his elbow on the table, hand threaded through his hair, one leg tucked under him.

Shintarou pauses in the doorway, sets his shoulder against the jamb, and gives in to the urge to just look, for a moment. The half-light picks burnished gold highlights in Kazunari’s hair, pronounces the spidery shadows his lashes cast on his cheeks, sets his skin aglow – and there is an endearing little furrow between his eyebrows that makes Shintarou’s mouth quirk upward, inadvertently.

Feeling the weight of Shintarou’s scrutiny, Kazunari looks up. His face softens. There is a profound, palpable fondness in his eyes that makes Shintarou’s breath catch in his throat.

“Hey, you,” Kazunari says, voice distractingly warm. He half-turns in his chair, “come here,” and he punctuates the command with a languid wave of his hand.

Shintarou, coming forward, sinks to his knees at Kazunari’s feet, lets his head fall in Kazunari’s lap. He curls his arms around Kazunari’s waist, hands finding purchase in the back of Kazunari’s shirt. He mouths _I’m sorry_ into the fabric of Kazunari’s shorts.

“I’m still mad at you, you know,” Kazunari says, but there is a smile in his voice and the fingers he cards through Shintarou’s hair feel a great deal like forgiveness.

-fin.

**Author's Note:**

> well! if you got this far, thank you so much for reading - kudos/comments/flailing is much, much appreciated /shot - and i hope you have a wonderful day.


End file.
